I have known for at least 7 years now that efficiency and effectiveness can easily become idols in my life- things that I value above God. I have held efficiency as a top value in my life and have gotten easily irritated about others who don’t prioritize it in their lives. I have prided myself in my remarkable ability to multitask and accomplish a lot in a day. Having small children (6, 5 and almost 2 years old) has exposed this value of my in increasing fashion. I hear to the words that come out of my mouth when I talked to them and realize just how hurried I sound. Small children are a great threat to efficiency because they are small-their steps are small, their brains are small, and they can only accomplish a small amount of effective tasks! All of this is normal and good for my small children! None the less it can be extremely frustrating.
Recently I have been more and more convicted of my hurried language with my kids. I realize that they already have a remarkable ability to tune me out! Asking them to do a task that should be able to be done with efficiency and effectiveness does not get done in any timely matter because they are not hearing me. My language then moves to a tone of hurriedness and rushing because they have not listened to my instructions the first 5 times! (I realize I have a respecting authority problem here but that’s a blog for another day). It is in these situations that I feel the convicted. I don’t want my kids to grow up saying mom was always rushing from one good thing to the next. In my heart I believe I am doing a pretty good job (by the grace of God) of enjoying the moment and being present in the moment however, this underling idol of efficiency still creeps in and I fear I am passing along a hurried life approach to my children. I am praising God for His Spirit’s conviction and for a community around me that desires my best and challenges sin in my life.
Recently I started to received the Unhurried Living daily emails ( not sure how I got on the list but I think God had His hand in it) in one of the emails was a link to this video.
I wouldn’t say all of it was describing me but enough of it was that I felt I needed to do some confession and some rethinking of how I speak to my children and how I can prevent myself from rushing them so often. I have not come up with a completely flushed out plan to attack this idol in my life but I am not ignoring it or priding myself in it any longer! I am going to seek accountability through my husband and my kids to help me keep my hurried language in check. I am going to try new strategies to help my kids listen to my instructions the first time I give them. I am going to ask the Holy Spirit to help me and convict me quickly when my pride starts to stroke my ego for all the tasks I can accomplish.
I am grateful to the Lord that I am in process and that being in process is OK. I praise God that “He who began a good work in me will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.” Phil. 1:6
